N/A: This one is a little short, but came a little easier than the last one. Let me know what you think.
The evening past quickly for John, he spent the majority of the time watching Claire mingle with their friends, and with her fellow graduates. When Claire walked up to Todd Cavanaugh, the guy she went to prom with, John itched to go over and offer to get her a drink. He noticed that Claire seemed guarded when talking to her old classmates. In fact, she seemed to be guarded with him as well, and he was too distracted to notice before. He thought he should stop analyzing, so he went to the bar, ordered a Jack and went for a stroll in the court yard.
The courtyard at the hotel was elegantly decorated. There were stone paths that led their way through the flowering shrubs and trees. All the paths met in the middle of the court where there was a pergola aged with years of weathering, ivy growing up around it and tiny white lights weaved throughout. John laughed lowly to himself, he was sure that this was taken from a movie somewhere, but couldn't put his finger on it.
"Care to fill me in on the joke?" Claire asked from behind him. He turned around slowly and nearly lost his balance when he saw her. It was one thing to see her dressed in that dress inside where she looked like she belonged mingling with her peers. It was something else to see her in that dress outside in the romance of the evening. He wasn't sure if the wind was on his side or against him when it picked up and accentuated the slit going up Claire's right leg and lifted her hair from her neck exposing inviting, white skin. He watched as she lifted her martini glass to her lips and couldn't help but shift his focus to her mouth as she sipped her drink. He wondered, for a split second, how the gloss she applied to her lips seem to keep them at the point where they appeared moist and tempting at all times.
"Not really." He managed to get out before having to wet his throat with his good friend Jack. He invited the slow burn down his throat and warming in his belly that the whiskey provided. He watched as Claire looked around. She seemed to take in every detail of their environment and when she looked back to him, she had something in her eyes. Something that told of wonder and anticipation. Something that made John have that instinctual fight or flight urge. He chose neither.
Instead, when the band queued up inside with an old Edith Piaf classic, he held his hand out. Looking at him suspiciously she placed her glass on one of the benches that lined the gazebo as he did, and she took his hand. When he drew her close to him, her body seemed to vibrate. She seemed to be scared, and he smiled into her hair, because he was scared as hell, too. He didn't know if he could do this.
He loved that when they danced she danced with him cheek-to-cheek without putting her head on his shoulder. He thought it made her seem both cautious and romantic. He held her close with his hand splayed across her lower back and his other hand enveloping hers held close to his heart. He knew that before he settled in too comfortably he had to say something. Before any words escaped his lips, he already regretted it.
"You need to tell me, Claire." He said, hating the pit in his stomach warning him that he shouldn't push her.
She stiffed in his arms, he could feel the tension in the muscles of her back instantly tighten. She leaned back and looked at his with fake aloofness in her eyes. "What do you mean, John? Tell you what?"
"Tell me why you're hiding. Every time you talk about Cole you get this look in your eye. And I know it's not him. I know you're not still nursing your broken heart over him." He held his breath hoping to God he was right. He had to be right, it had been years since her divorce and from what he understood she initiated it.
"And how do you know, John? Do you really expect that after ten years, you can come back here and expect to know me? How dare you?" She asked. Anger was coursing through her body so fast she started quaking and her eyes began to fill. "You don't know me except what you remember of me from high school. Jesus, John, we're not kids anymore." She turned on her heel to leave.
"Claire, wait." John said lowly, not sure if she would. She stopped dead in her tracks, but didn't turn. As if waiting for him to say the magic words before she would turn around and go back into his arms. "I may not know you. Maybe I thought more of the past thirty six hours than you did, but you need to tell me. Maybe this isn't what you want to hear, but you and I both know I'm an asshole."
"Yeah," She responded softly in an eerie calm that seemed to envelop her. "I guess we do." She said before walking back in the hotel, leaving him out in the cold.